Juan Domingo Perón

Juan Domingo Perón (1895–1974) rose to national prominence after participating in the June 1943 military coup that ousted President Ramón Castillo. As Secretary of Labor and later Vice President under the military government, he cultivated a powerful base among industrial workers and trade unions by expanding collective bargaining, paid holidays, and social security. His detention in October 1945 triggered the mass mobilization of 17 October 1945, a founding myth of Peronism, in which workers marched on the Plaza de Mayo to demand his release.

Perón won the presidency in February 1946 and was re-elected in 1951. His first two terms, supported by his wife Eva Duarte de Perón ("Evita") until her death in 1952, were marked by nationalization of railways and the central bank, the Five-Year Plans, women's suffrage (Law 13.010 of 1947), and a foreign policy of the "Third Position" between U.S. capitalism and Soviet communism. Economic strain, conflict with the Catholic Church, and military discontent culminated in the Revolución Libertadora coup of September 1955, which sent him into 18 years of exile, primarily in Francoist Spain.

Peronism remained legally proscribed for much of the following period, but its electoral weight forced successive governments to negotiate with it. Perón returned to Argentina in 1973, won a third presidential term that October with his wife Isabel Martínez de Perón as running mate, and died in office on 1 July 1974. His legacy is contested: admirers credit him with empowering the working class and building the modern welfare state in Argentina, while critics point to authoritarian practices, press censorship, and the long-term fiscal and institutional costs of his model. The Justicialist Party (PJ) he founded remains one of the dominant forces in Argentine politics.